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Dubai or ‘Donny’? the choice was hard on Saturday, the World Cup in the Gulf or the opening day of the Flat in Britain? £15m prize money, including the world’s richest race at the former, plays £270,000 at Doncaster.
The great and the good of British racing - the same freeloaders who persist in trumpeting our sport as “the best in the world” - voted with their passports seduced by the splendours of Sheikh Mohammed’s hospitality.
His sumptuous Meydan racecourse was the only building completed in Dubai this year as the property market there collapses.
The criteria for our authorities’ claim is never elaborated but at least the British filly Dar Re Mi flew the flag handsomely.
The French had heinously thrown her out after her Group One victory over them in last year’s Prix Vermeille. She was amply compensated in the £3.2m Sheema Classic.
Not only is Dar Re Mi trained in Newmarket by John Gosden, she is owned by the Lloyd-Webbers – not quite in the Sheikh Mohammed league but well up the British ‘rich list’ nicely bankrolled by a succession of hit musicals.
Moreover Da Re Mi is by Singspiel who was the last British trained World Cup winner – 13 years ago.
William Buick has taken over as Gosden’s stable jockey when many think there are a good few years in the tall trainer’s previous pilot Jimmy Fortune.
Buick, 21, is a former champion apprentice and although Norway stakes a claim on him (through his mother and upbringing) the precocious young man is a budding star of the world scene. His guidance of the five-year-old mare could not have been surpassed.
This column is a Brit’s take on the world’s richest meeting, but apologies for not giving pride of place to Gloria De Campeao’s victory in the £5m Dubai Cup.
Not only will Brazil celebrate their victory in the forthcoming football version, they bred and nurtured the seven-year-old winner of this extravaganza.
France has substantial claims on the honours too.
Chantilly trainer Pascal Bary is much respected in the UK, not least for Natagora’s exploits in 2007 and 2008 when she captured the Cheveley Park Stakes and then the One Thousand Guineas on her two visits to Newmarket.
The World Cup finish was a three-way photo with Gloria De Campeao nosing out Lizard’s Desire for South Africa and ex-French Allybar for the host.
Our team of Gitano Hernando, Crowded House and Twice Over were also-rans but Kevin Shea, rider of Lizard’s Desire, would have felt better had he been among them.
Shea suffered the worst jockey’s nightmare, ’premature jocksticulation’, sure he had got up in the final stride and celebrating a triumph which the photo showed he was never going to savour.
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Frogwatch, by Rolf Johnson 
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